Category Archives: Art/Culture

Celebrating 40 years of resistance to Lignite Mining in Rhineland the previous Sunday a “Rainbow Action” took place in the forest. Starting with hundreds of bicyclist converging from both Cologne and Aachen bringing back a cheerful, colorful and busy feeling breaking the Forest monotony of constantly anticipating and dreading large police actions and evictions. Anticipating or denying which has turned into such an art and sport in Hambi that perhaps bets should be taken with the winner who gets the date of next police action right getting as a reward a police baton or helmet from past actions that can be found at ZAD or at many infoshops. Those not guessing right or not knowing would and will be hit with hundreds more batons, sprayed in the face with pepper spray during those more unwelcome visits that could happen today, tomorrow or day after and which more and more resemble large scale military maneuvers and exercises.

If the majority had any actual and not just simbolic say in aproving these actions not just everyone in those photos but most of the German and World’s population would choose to have those same resources invested in sustainable and ecological energy transition, re-training, education and not in Climate Chaos imposing repression of present day reality of RWE’s Energie-Reich of North Rhine Westphalia and of German and Global North’s Illusion of Coal Exits and energie transitions, while thermally nuking the Global South and destroying last remaining millenarian habitats left in all of Europe.

In the forest the continual insanity if lignite extraction and dumping of over 150 millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere from the mine destroying Hambi alone and the waves of brutality, arrogance and injustice that perpetuate it, all of it is also beginning to resemble less and less repression as we have known it and more and more feudal hunts in which the local peasants(the police) would form lines and funnel wild animals into awaiting feudal lords, in this case RWE, that would dispatch them with a spear or a crossbow, in our case locking-up and taking out of action forest and climate activists for months and months in prisons in ever greater numbers, stripped of any illusion of a due process while the whole habitat of Millenarian Hambacher Forest is being killed and erased: as if it were a hunting trophy in the Fossil Fuels Planet-wide safari keeping the whole Earth in the cross-hairs and not letting go of the trigger. Slaughtering last of the last while going on an on about either about Cease Fire or about how dangerous those animals really are.

These cheerfull and colorful photos are our own distraction from the bleak, gray planet wide cloud of coal dust, its microparticles and carbon, concussion grenades and CS gas and in the Global South of live bullets that is beginning to engulf us and the rest of the planet like the dome of coal driven smog and smoke that now covers most of Chinese cities. None of which would not be possible without the present campaign of Green Scare Propaganda (latest Bild tabloid article with Hambi on front Page “Eco Terrorism out of Control” in which local police chief is quoted as saying that Hambi eviction would take two months) that projects a darker image of ecological activism. This image being more more conducive to keeping climate activists and occupiers of the forest in prison for months without transparent and just(if such thing ever existed in capitalist legal machine) legal process, keeping the environmental groups and experts out of coal exit talks as RWE would like and will get if the climate emergency it is causing will continue to cause more political polarization, more fear based politics and more corruptions and shortsightedness of those in power. Propaganda and lies that attempt to erode this support seen in those fotos, divide one group from another and finally limit the discussion on why so little is done to address this global emergency when so many resources are used instead to attack and imprison those that point out and fight against these systemic problems.

If there can be “No Jobs on a Dead Planet” then also all the pension funds, gifts, investments and positions that RWE is offering right and left to influence the status-quo “decision”-making and which it uses to enlarge its Climate-Change-Denying-Idiot-Bubble and to continue to get a free ride and to maintain their planetary criminality and terrorism(giving actual criminals and freedom fighter world over a horrible rap)then all those perks and kick-downs that keep the capitalist machine oiled up and greased up are all pretty meaningless as well. Breathing money can not be any more successful than breathing CO2 especially in a “Culture” that connects one to the other and finances and justifies its own suffocation.

As this year started with arctic melting and ice-cover break-up in mid-winter and continues with extreme weather all-time temperature records aready in April and May it will continue with some of the largest police actions in (Post?)Modern Germany putting in place and reinforcing a global disaster that is so extreme, complete, irreversible and unprecedented that it will be especially the children and descendants of those who with wealth, privilege and arrogance are attempting to isolate themselves from this reality who will be wanting the answers the most.

The people in the Forest and many of those in those photos will not fall in the category of those that have done nothing or who helped to destroy all hope for stable and livable planet. It has been said that the best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago and the next best time is now. This must be another thing that Fighting Climate Change and trees have in common.

Join us then here and everywhere to resist this toxic, waves of scorching heatwaves fueled by fossil fools reality that few would be willing to accept if it wasn’t forced upon the population, and upon those in the forest and those on the barricades with tanks with helicopters, with platoons of cops with dogs and horses and then followed with criminalization and unjust non-transparent prison sentences. Forced by hierarchical patriarchal power structures that manage to convince those they co-opted and sucked into their sphere of influence that they do not have any individual choice, which might be the case but that does not absolve any of those involved from responsibility for their actions. Responsibility that they will have to face in the imminent future of food insecurity, climate destabilization and ecological collapse. Responsibility that they all will have to face especially from those closest to them they are pulling with them into violent and precarious reality in which the weather becomes our enemy and specie after specie vanishes at the fastest rate in the history of this planet, the gretest extinction not the 6th(chronological designation)of Life ever. Hence once again the importace of Propaganda in redirecting the attention from, how State and power structures are imposing a reality of terror, huger and violence on the rest of the planet to focus on activists that are atempting to stop this globally suicidal machine.

Einstein said that if bees vanish(rather prophetic statement as colony collapse disorder managed to wipe out most of domesticated bees already) we are bound to follow. It should take no Einstein to guess what the faith and effect of “business as usuall” mentality on this Civilization, on humanity in general, and especially of this Planet as a whole will be and already is if more than half of all species are killed-off, climate turns each year more and more into an unstable nightmare and such vital resources as clean water and air become more and more scarce.

You want to imagine the future? Imagine a Coal Power Plant’s Smoke Stack that perpetually collapses on each being and each habitat that exists and that will ever exist on this Planet, and that keeps collapsing and crashing down on them all forever……

Ok a little admission of guilt for all of those who did not spot it: the previous sentence is a total rip off of Orwell’s quote. He said that if you want to imagine the future imagine a Jack-boot that steps on a human face forever. With both police chief of Duren: Winesbach(sp?) who quadruples at least every estimate of activists in the forests in his frequent especially tabloid interviews and not any less surreal Rhine Energie board of advisors member and police minister of North Rhine Westphalia Herbert Reul, both in a big hurry to change their sneakers and office shoes for army boots with the new draconian police laws that they are attempting to put in place and which they have already been testing on Hambi prisoners for awhile with minimal public outcry outside of anarchists communities. Will all of that this quote like that of Einstein’s warning about the bees is turning to be another self-actualized prediction. So until at least the army boot and munitions factories get buried by the collapsing-coal-power-plant-chimneys of climate-chaos get ready for one bumpy ride. Get a guitar and/or gas mask, crypto up, form a reliable affinity group, don’t forget to tell all un-solidaric assholes to fuck-off and no matter what have fun. Poetry, music and art have always been a crucial part in the arsenal of protest and resistance…

On a finite planet not just all good things but also the bad ones must come to an end and how and when they end is decided especially by those who have not buried themselves in the virtual media and industry manufactured “realities” and who for every connection to life and solidarity that is severed forcefully and intentionally form at least two in their place, two that become much stronger than ever before as their importance finally is realized.

In November 2012, an activist with an elaborate tunnel entrenchment in the Hambach Forest ended the silence surrounding the deforestation of this formerly gigantic forest area in the city triangle, Cologne, Dusseldorf and Aachen, which had been in operation since 1972. Far beyond the local borders, the clearing of the ancient Hambach forests by the energy company RWE became known. Today only 10% of this forest is left. Activists from various groups had set themselves the task of making the Rhenish lignite mining area a focal point for the fight against coal-fired power generation. more…

This Saturday at 10:00 join us for breakfast in the Meadow Occupation following which we will plant this year’s vegetable and herb gardens. After 3-4 hours of which we will go for a Wild Forest Food walk and collect nettles (Brennesseln) for vegan burgers and forest “cooked spinach” with Bear Garlic collection for Pesto, we will also collect an assortment of other spring fresh forest plants for a wild salad. We will then chill out in the forest and have lunch. Here it has to be also pointed out that it is estimated that Earth, in its present state of ecological deterioration, could only sustain about 20 million people if wild foods were being widely harvested. So this mini wild-foods skill-sharing is just to show what forest have been able to offer us and what will disappear when they like Hambi (most of it this Oct-March) will be gone and destroyed. With many plants like Nettles, Bear Garlic, and Dandelion being the first pioneering plants in the previously disturbed and cut by RWE areas.

Every year for last six years there have been planted extensive, vegetable and herb gardens in the meadow. This year do to high intensity and frequency of large police actions and detentions we have fallen a bit behind. Many of us have also been spending more time deeper in the forest resisting RWE’s attempt to destroy it. So any support planting this year would be a great exercise of community coming together, a celebration of spring.

Every planting and every garden in the Hambach Forest Occupation has showed that the RWE clear-cutting and Climate killing CO2 dumping coming from its open cast pits has not just been resisted, with blockades, barricades, locking on and sabotage but also with gardens, kitchens, music, sense of community and art all of which combined were and are so powerful and dangerous that thousands of police with helicopters, tanks, horses, dogs, cranes and bulldozers had to be send on many different occassions to try to destroy it also attempting to convince the population that we and not RWE continuing dumping of 150 millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere is the real risk and real danger to the local community, region and the Planet. Hmmm you could have build a heck of mega large scale gardens for the budget of 100s of millions used against hambi. But such a mega project with the coruption and mutual back scratching involved in government projects would probably be very limited, boring hirarhical with most funds sub-divided internally in between industry and government officials with another large portion left to pay off the press such as Build to write what great job they did and how glad everybody is that they have done it(if they did which of course they have not).

So once again for creative, simple, muscle and veggie powered horizontalist resistance action join us this Saturday 10:00 in the Meadow!

This weekend on Saturday and Sunday another successful Skill-share Camp concluded with full days of workshops and on a lighter note concerts on Saturday and Sunday. Both of the last 2 days also were full of political discourse, DiY, Media workshops and numerous activities such a piercing and tatoo workshops. The Meadow and the Forest filled with circles of groups sitting on the ground, walking through out the forest occupation, learning climbing and many other skills, all of this to a beautiful background sounds of birds serenading, sharing their happiness of first warm and sunny weather of this spring. Birds and other organisms that in a year or two will be deprived of their habitat like many of those living in the forest after the sure to come evictions. Like birds the forest activists continue to build a new and rebuild after the storms of repression and after the waves RWE Social and Climate Chaos. Continuing to expand and rebuild knowing very well that that all our and our animal comrades’ habitats are shrinking and that after 2018-20 cutting season the whole ancient Hambacher Forest will seize to exist. That’s why a call goes out to all who attended the Skill-shares and to others who are not at Hambi that in case of Forest Evictions if you are not able to come and help rebuild and re-occupy please consider doing a banner action in front of your local coal power station if there is one close by or by RWE offices which there should be one, or a German consulate or embassy if you are outside of KohleAusstieg(Coal Exit) Land. Let’s point out the price of Climate and Ecological destruction is not just destroying the Planet and habitats but also communities and cultural and protest spaces such as Hambacher Forest Occupation. That is the true price of Carbon and Coal, so please help us bring that message home and deal with numerous disconnects on which Climate Disaster Capitalism is based.

Saturday also ended on a more playfull twist: a Quiz Show on Radical People’s history with prizes took place. In case you have not been there here are some of the questions that were asked to test your knowledge of our collective past: (with answers on the bottom of this article):
1.What revolution took place in 1918.
2.What happened during Shah’s visit to Berin?
3.Which revolution was named after a flower. With extra point for the year it took place.
4.List 3 ways of blockading a road. With extra point if anybody in the quiz group was arrested for using that method.
5. What tropical plant was the revolution in Bougaville named after with a documentary of that same time.

On Sunday the final “workshop” was a day long session dealing with the realities of cleaning up the theory and praxis aftermath of the skillshares in the Meadow, aka[d1]: “Meadow Clean Up Workshop”.

Selected quiz answers.
1. German Sailors rebell after the end of WWI and form workers councils inspired by the Bolshevik revolution. The revolution was know as November Revolution, Kiel Revolt, or also by their participant name of Red Sailors.
2. During the Shahs visit to Berlin a West German policeman Karl-Heinz Kurras shot the student Benno Ohnesormore sparking the beginning of student radicalization, resulting also in formation of RAF. Interesting sidenote: once STASI archives were opened it turned out that Kurras was a paid East German spy. It is not possible to say if him shooting Benno was an intentional attempt to radicalize the West German student movement, however without doubt the resulting political polarization benefited the East German State greatly, even though most students in the West were inspired more by Maoist example than by the existing models of Socialism in the Eastern Bloc.
3 . Carnation Revolution took place in Portugal on 25 April 1974. Initiated by a non-violent military coup it overthrew the authoritarian regime of the Estado Novo, and was overtaken by civil resistance and protest to the fallen dictatorship. Also known as Revoluo dos Cravos.
4.This is an open list as there is multiplicity of methods, and anything that is effective counts just as it counts whther it was and it is possible to put this theory into practice
5. Coconut Revolution. Named as the Bougaville rebels utilized the plant for food, fiber, oil and even fuel.

Tomorrow at 7:00 pm Hambach Forest and #FreeHambi4 Solidarity event will be held at Freedom Books, London. It will include a presentation, documentary screening, an exhibit of photos and prisoner solidarity art with prisoner letter writing and a vegan dinner. Please help us spread info to people in the region as obviously this is a last moment event. Short update from Pont Valley protection camp will also be given.

Freedom Books is located right outside Aldgate, before White Chapel, tube station. Located in a passage on the side of White Chapel Art Gallery.

“Dear environmentalists,
We need your support! Only for half an hour.
Please come tomorrow at 11:55 am to the RWE Tower in Essen and express your solidarity for the preservation of the Hambach Forest.
By conserving the Hambach Forest, RWE must set a symbol for the exit from ligbite power generation and declare itself in favor of an RWE specific transition to renewable energies…Open Street Map
In collaboration of BUND and Greenpeace there is a daily vigil at the RWE tower in Essen: “Two to twelve – Time to Rethink”. The topics: Hambach Forest, Coal exit, CO₂-Problem.” Duration about 30 minutes.More info

“Let’s make (hi)story together!

We invite you to an interactive fairytale evening on Friday, December 22, 2017. We take the winter solstice as an occasion for a fairytale evening of a different kind: At the beginning, a story is read out. Afterwards we can continue to develop the story together.

Time: Friday, December 22, 2017, 4:00 pm
Location: Round house in the meadow

Maybe a co-developed story can serve as an inspiration and a vision, with which we actually make history together in 2018 and the miracle of Manheim comes true:The last remnant of the Hambach forest remains and can regenerate itself.The demolition work in the villages of Manheim and Morschenich will be stopped and the vision of the “New Village” will be implemented.The terra nova observation deck will offer a view of innovative energy storage solutions which ensure on a long-term basis, together with renewable energies in the former Rhenish lignite mining area
1) security of supply,
2) jobs,
3) competitiveness,
taking into account the natural and non-negotiable environmental laws.

The language of this event will be German. Depending on the interest and feedback we might offer an evening in English next year.

Yesterday the forest was full of supporters and visitiors as 3 organized groups came to the forest: Radical Forest Walk, Meditation Walk and a BikeTour. Thank you to all who came and also brought supplies such as batteries, blankets and the homemade vegan cakes.

This is happening at the time when there is obvious attempts to errode the base of support taking place by engaging in obvious propaganda campaign to potray Hambi people as dangerous extremist. This narrative convieniently ignores that many in the forest just days ago were being pepper sprayed and injured by the cops to stop the profit-mad extremists from crashing the planet and its climate.

Defend Hambi or choose to fester and die in a Zambie Climate Chaos reality of extincion and foodcollapse!!! The choice is yours! And as all the supporters this sunday and during past week showed: you do not have to live in the forest to make that choice.

Rhymes for action on the frontlines of globla resistance. Sung for Hambacher Forest Peeps as the mainstream WDR media told us to get out of the way as we filmed this and then removed us from most of their shots. No compromise in getting our message out, alowing it to be diluted, reframed or apropriated. Our solidarity goes to comrades in Zad the Notre Dam who never welcomed media with open arms for this reason. This is also a reminder to chanell the intensity of this message into an independent media and prepare our cameras and smart phones as weapons in the battle for the future of this planet as a livable location for multitude of species, organism and communities. We can only rely on the mainstream profit-based media to ignore not just our presence but also the repression and violence that we are about to face.

“Don’t Hate the Media – Be the AutonoMedia!” Calling on videographers, photographers and artists to come to the forest and document a reality on a brink of extinction and to come when the attack and state violence beggin and document it.

All used digital cameras, phone, smartphones, and keyboarded and keyboardless data entry devices for press work and documentation work would be more than apreciated by all the barrios through out the forest.

We do not carry out the wishes of the police. But not accepting this invitation really would be a shame. React with your experiences with the police. If you like, also to us: hambacherforst@nullriseup.net

Text on the website of the police:
Our Christmas wish: Paint your experience with the police.

This year’s Fall Skillshare Camp has been filled with numerous workshops on the diverse subjects ranging from anarcho feminist theory and practice to multiple direct action skills and strategies. Like always it has offered all those resisting capitalist exploitation of the planet and numerous communities a chance to come together and connect, share and ispire each other.

Yesterday for example concluded with a spoken word session dealing with topics from alienation and resistance to musical concert with many of the works being about the Hambacher Forest struggle itself.

Additional 3 days of the Skillshare camp remain so pack a backpack and hit your closest highway on-ramp and put a thumb up in the direction of Hambi…now or during the whole cutting season as the occupation with its constant climbing workshops and sharing of knowlege could be considered one extended skillshare camp.